Bolton: Those With Cyberattack Capability ‘Will Use It’

Former UN Ambassador John Bolton argued that those who have cyberattack capability “will use it” and that “the United States does not have adequate offensive cyberwarfare capabilities” on Thursday’s “On the Record” on the Fox News Channel.

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Bolton stated that the Obama administration was “correct” to treat the Sony hack as a national security threat. And “if you treat this simply as inconvenience. Other countries will conclude that they can attack and get away with it. And particularly with this administration, what they’ve just done on Cuba, among other things, it’s a weak presidency. And I think those that have the cyber capability will use it.”

He added “I think the United States does not have adequate offensive cyberwarfare capabilities. And in the absence of developing those, I think if we can conclude it was North Korea, we need to put them back on the list of state sponsors of terrorism. We need to put all the economic sanctions back in place. This regime never should have been let out of international sanctions. And I think we’re paying for it in part now.”

He also argued “we have simply not paid enough attention to the threat that cyberattacks pose for the government, for our business community. You know, the Pentagon has estimated that the top 2,000 American corporations have all been hacked by China. We don’t know if Sony is the the worst attack because we don’t know what the Chinese or others have left behind that can blow up later.” And “there’s a lot that needs to be done. And it starts at the conceptual level. What amounts to warfare using the cyber world?What amounts to espionage? What’s theft? What’s vandalism? Is this attack on Sony an attack on the United States? Is it a criminal act against a corporation?”